Google Unifies All of Its Messaging and Communication Apps Into a Single Team
Soltero tells me that there are no immediate plans to change or integrate any of Google's apps, so don't get your hopes up for that (yet). "We believe people make choices around the products that they use for specific purposes," Soltero says. Still, Google's communications apps are in dire need of a more coherent and opinionated production development, and Soltero could very well be the right person to provide that direction. Prior to joining Google, he had a long career that included creating the much-loved Acompli email app, which Microsoft acquired and essentially turned into the main Outlook app less than two months after signing the deal.
Soltero has also moved rapidly (at least by the standards of Google's communication apps) to clean up the Hangouts branding mess, converting Hangouts Video to Google Meet and Hangouts Chat to Google Chat -- at least on the enterprise side. Google Meet also became free for everybody far ahead of the original schedule because of the pandemic. Cleaning up the consumer side of all that is more complicated, but Soltero says, "The plan continues to be to modernize [Hangouts] towards Google Meet and Google Chat."
Soltero tells me that there are no immediate plans to change or integrate any of Google's apps, so don't get your hopes up for that (yet). "We believe people make choices around the products that they use for specific purposes," Soltero says. Still, Google's communications apps are in dire need of a more coherent and opinionated production development, and Soltero could very well be the right person to provide that direction. Prior to joining Google, he had a long career that included creating the much-loved Acompli email app, which Microsoft acquired and essentially turned into the main Outlook app less than two months after signing the deal.
Soltero has also moved rapidly (at least by the standards of Google's communication apps) to clean up the Hangouts branding mess, converting Hangouts Video to Google Meet and Hangouts Chat to Google Chat -- at least on the enterprise side. Google Meet also became free for everybody far ahead of the original schedule because of the pandemic. Cleaning up the consumer side of all that is more complicated, but Soltero says, "The plan continues to be to modernize [Hangouts] towards Google Meet and Google Chat."